Tuesday, 11 March 2014

What is consciousness? And how does inanimate matter, gives rise to consciousness?

Of course we don’t know the answer to this. But can we say anything about
it? I think how consciousness arise, must be very similar to how any complex
structure or system arise in nature. Consciousness must follow the natural laws
applicable to other natural phenomenon.

Broadly speaking, it is contextual similarly to asking “ how order arise
out of chaos” or simply put does how does “complexity arise out simplicity”?

All of nature works/creates with very simple rules. Like

A. Self Organization- is a process where some form of global order or
coordination arises out of the local interactions between the components of an
initially disordered system.

or

Ability of a system to spontaneously arrange its components or elements in
a purposeful (non-random) manner, under appropriate conditions but without the
help of an external agency.

B. Self Similarity- is just self similar, replicating. This is how river
tributaries form or how a tree branches.

C. Evolution (feed back loops)

These are very simple but very powerful tools, and are responsible for the
complex world we live. They can explain everything in nature, and I think these
simple laws can also help explain the problem of consciousness.

Consciousness is very mysterious to us, I suspect this might be because its
so deceptively simple. We experiential and naturally know it, but its
impossible to describe. Consciousness is also a very common phenomenon,
everything from bacteria to humans have it. Meaning its very easy to
create for nature, and its critical for life.

I think of consciousness as inter-relation between sets of complex
information, self-organizing it self to an optimal condition. Much like an
operating system running on a computer. "An operating system (OS) is a
collection of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides
common services for computer programs." So in this view, we have
individual softwares like a software to interpret visual sensory information
coming from eyes, and software for interpreting auditory sensory information
from ears, these are hardwired in the brain. The interplay/inter-relations
between two or more softwares , into a singular platform where it can be
experienced. In this view our consciousness would be like an OS, thats
connecting/managing all the individual softwares into a singular experience. A
conscious experience. Strings of these conscious experiences happening very
moment, is what we collective understand as consciousness.

A highly evolved management system/OS, perfected by
nature(evolution/feedback) over billions of years. Running in everything, from
the most common microbes to us. Build upon a hard ware designed by
self-organisation, self-similarity and evolution.

Consciousness being like an OS, would also imply that consciousness would
be very hard to pin down in the brain. And would exist as a diffused coherent
network of inter-relations between data sets of memory and other softwares (sensory
information processing softwares). That consciousness is not a “physical
thing”, something very subtle, immaterial like information.

I’ve had this thought haunting me for many years, I am not proposing any
theories or saying this is what is happening. Just sharing my explanation to
the problem of consciousness and consciousness it self. And would love to hear,
what people think of this idea/thought..